The Google Desktop application allows users to search their desktop content quickly and easily. Praised for its ingenuity and criticised for its intrusiveness, Google Desktop brings the power of Google’s search engine technology to your PC.

After installing the application, you’ll have to give it some time to index the files on your PC, including emails, photos, chats, contacts and calendar events. Google Desktop will index the first 10,000 words in the first 100,000 documents on your PC. The application supports the majority of file types and you can decide which ones to index, or omit protected files, using the preferences menu.

In its latest version, which is compatible with Windows Vista, Google Desktop has been given a new transparent look, providing a pretty sleek feel to your PC. Your search results will appear in your browser (in the familiar Google web page format) and a small preview button allows you to view results without actually clicking on the corresponding link. Results are as precise as we’ve come to expect from Google searches, however we were slightly disappointed to learn that the application doesn’t offer logical 'OR' support or substring search. On another note, Google Desktop is not limited to your PC as you can cross index content from multiple machines and share some panel items with your friends.

Google Desktop is not only about search, though. Joining a marketplace already occupied by Apple’s Dashboard Widgets and Yahoo! Widgets, Google Desktop can be fitted with any number of little gadgets. These mini apps perform all kinds of functions, from fetching your mail to jotting down notes or checking up on your local weather. There are hundreds of gadgets to choose from to customize your desktop bar. Our personal favorites are: Google Translate, the Skype plug-in to check your credit and call your contacts, “Am I Blocked” to find out who’s blocked you on IM, Workspace to quickly move between tasks, System Stats to monitor your PC and Games, a selection of Flash games like Tetris and Moonlander.

When running, we found Google Desktop to use up around 30 MBs, but that can quickly increase if you add more gadgets to it. The application is also constantly re-indexing your files to incorporate your modifications and new elements. However you should rarely feel your PC slowing due to indexing.

When you’re dealing with Google, however, you know the main criticism will be about security. Because Google Desktop indexes all your documents, you’re basically opening up your PC and all your personal files to the Moutain View company. What some users fear is that Google could one day take advantage of that access or that a bug in the application would allow malicious users to infiltrate your PC and steal information.

While the intrusiveness of Google Desktop will give some users pause for thought on installing the app, Google Desktop is highly effective and simple to use. The gadgets you can add to its sidebar may not all be essential, but many of them are quite fun and original and let’s face it, the sidebar looks good. Give it a go if you think your PC is a mess and you need quick access to anything.

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Everything could be that replacement you're looking for. This simple, fast tool indexes absolutely all the contents on your hard drive (hence its name) and puts them into an ever-growing database that you can search with keywords, like you use any regular search engine.

The program is incredibly fast in all aspects: installation, indexing of contents and display of results. Also, it doesn't hog system resources like other similar apps do. Another difference between Everything and other local search tools is that Everything lets you set up an HTTP server that makes all indexed content available online.

On the one hand this is a handy feature because you can access your files remotely from other computers or share files with your friends: on the other hand it does raise some concerns about privacy, especially since there's no way to filter which kind of content is indexed and which is not, neither is there a system for controlling who has access to the HTTP server.

Everything is a simple, really fast local search tool that makes a great replacement for Windows default search box, though sadly you don't have any control over what the program indexes.

Download Everything 1.2.1.371 in Softonic

But what happens when you need to find items both on your PC and on networked drives including e-mail messages, calendar appointments and documents? Microsoft Windows Desktop Search attempts to bridge this gap by providing a fast and efficient search tool across network drives. The bottom line is that it doesn't do a bad job although as usual with Microsoft products, you can't help feeling there's much room for improvement.

One installed, in classic Microsoft style, you have to restart your computer. The first thing you'll notice is that it installs search boxes absolutely everywhere - from a toolbar in Internet Explorer to the taskbar, Outlook client and just about any other Microsoft product. There's even a floating search bar which you can place on your desktop for use at any time.

Searches on your PC are nowhere near as fast as with Google Desktop but it does a decent job of searching for appointments in Outlook and files on external drives although external searches do take a notably longer time.

Microsoft Windows Desktop Search offers a useful solution to anyone looking to search across networks and especially Outlook related tasks although as far as desktop searches go, I'll be sticking with Google.

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With DocFetcher you can scan through documents stored on your computer and find words and sentences inside the text – not just in the file's name. The program creates an index with selected folders and then lets you look through the contents of those folders, without having to open and search every single file individually.

Before using DocFetcher, you'll need to pick the folder you want the program to index, by right clicking the Search Scope field on the left side of the interface. This indexing is not automatic, but can be easily updated by pressing F5. Plus you can use filters such as maximum size or file type to obtain better results.

DocFetcher supports all popular formats (DOC, HTML, TXT, PDF, PPT, XLS and many more) but unfortunately it didn't seem to work with PDFs during our tests. The program has a built-in viewer to preview search results.

With DocFetcher you can search inside documents in a variety of formats.

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Super Finder XT's interface has the 'ribbons' style, introduced in Microsoft Office, which looks really smart and is certainly very accessible. There's a choice of blue, black or silver skins, and you can add plugins too - although currently there don't seem to be any to download!

Obviously, the most important feature is the search itself, and Super Finder XT doesn't disappoint. It's a little slower than Windows search, as it doesn't index all your files, but this makes it a faster install, and a much lighter application overall.

You can refine your search by drive or path, make exclusions, search by date or file size and more. If you donate by paypal to the project, you can use some additional features like 'deep recycle bin scan'. Some of the Advanced options could be off putting, but there's a good help manual included that does a pretty good job of explaining what everything does.

All in all, Super Finder XT is a nice lightweight alternative to Windows Search. It's easy to use, but has great advanced options too.

Download Super Finder XT 1.6.2.1 in Softonic

SearchMyFiles isn't the fastest search tool available, as it doesn't perform any indexing of your files to make life easier. However, this means SearchMyFiles is ready to use from the start without a lengthy setup.

You can set searches to look in specific folders or drives, and exclude others if you want. You can search for files containing specific text or binary information, specify the size range of the file your after, and much more. You can even specify looking for read only, hidden, compressed and encrypted files. This makes SearchMyFiles a great way to scan folders or drives for types of file.

It's not really user friendly, but if you know a little about files and formats, SearchMyFiles should be pretty easy to use. What it is missing is a progress bar - sometimes you may start a search, and give up when no results appear. This is often because SearchMyFiles hasn't finished - it's not a very fast engine, and big drives can take a few minutes to scan. Despite this, it seems thorough and effective. You can use it to search for duplicate files - try it on your music folder to clean out those irritating repeated tracks in your collection!

It's not fast, but it's free, full of features and effective - SearchMyFiles is a valuable little search application for your toolbox!

Download SearchMyFiles 2.06 in Softonic

UltraFileSearch is a fast, efficient search tool that enables you to locate any file on your system in just a few seconds.

You can use UltraFileSearch to locate files and folders on your hard drive, local network or removable drive, based on various parameters: file or folder name, text contained inside the file, date, size and attributes – all of this without requiring background data indexing. It also has support for wildcards and can be triggered from the context menu thanks to its seamless integration with Windows Explorer.

Results are listed on the UltraFileSearch interface, and can be sorted according to different criteria. If you prefer to save them for later, you can export the list to various formats such as TXT, CVS and HTML, among others.

UltraFileSearch doesn’t waste system resources and performs all searches in a fast, effective way. It is, in short, a much better alternative to the default Windows tool.

With UltraFileSearch you can any files and folders on your system in no time.

Download UltraFileSearch Lite 2.9.0.12349 in Softonic

If you've had your email account for awhile and haven't been keeping it organized, it's easy to lose track of photos sent to you from friends and family. You probably have a bunch of pictures saved there that you won't even remember receiving. Good thing Lost Photos exists to help you unearth them all.

Running Lost Photos is easy. Just launch the program, enter the email address you want to search (plus a password), and the app will start searching for you. Lost Photos automatically stores discovered photos in a folder and let you share them via Facebook or, perhaps ironically, even through email.

There are also some nice customization options that Lost Photos offers to help you define your search criteria. Some of these include ignoring images below a certain file size, omitting different file types from your search, and searching from a set date on forward.

Unfortunately, Lost Photos doesn't work on all email accounts, Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) most notably.

Lost Photos is a great organizational tool that helps you search for photos sent to your via email.

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Due to full Unicode support, Archivarius 3000 allows correct search in multilingual documents. For instance, a Greek-German bilingual document can only be handled in Unicode, otherwise Greek symbols and German diacritics would be lost.

File names are also in Unicode, which enable correct handling of Asian documents (Japanese, Chinese, Korean). Archivarius 3000 searches not only e-mail messages, but also attachments, including compressed ones. The following formats are supported: Outlook, Outlook Express, The Bat!, PocoMail, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, and those that are compatible.

Server mode allows you to search remotely and have remote access to your documents through any web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer). This mode can be switched on with a single mouse click.

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Locate32 is a great little freeware app that makes searching your PC fast and easy. Setup of the program is easier than it first appears - the zip folder has four different .exe files in it, and the readme instructions are probably over complicated. However, it's actually simple! Just extract the zip file then double click 'locate32.exe' and it will run. To get it working, open File and click the 'Update Databases' option. Locate32 will then scan the hard drive, making a database to search from. This is remarkably quick - it won't take more than a few seconds.

Once your database it updated, searching is easy, super fast and completely flexible. Locate32 is both easy to use for the general user, and deep and complex for the power user. As well as file name, you can refine your search by extension, where to look (although it's so fast there's no point usually), date added and size and so on.

There are an intimidating number of settings, although most people won't need to fear them, as they won't be necessary. One nice option is 'Delete Private Data', which makes it easy to search without leaving a trace. Locate32 can also function as a portable app, as it doesn't require installation

While some users might be scared by the number of options available in Locate 32, it really is a simple and efficient search app that you will quickly learn to rely on.

Download Locate32 3.1.11.7100 in Softonic